192 3Ir. G. Johnstone Stone y [Feb. G, 



Outcome of a further Inquiry. 



Here we miglit rest and be content with the assurance that there 

 are at most only two kinds of existence known to us, thought and 

 motion — all that is within the mind being thought, all that is with- 

 out it motion. To this conclusion science inevitably leads ; and of 

 its truth, as of all other scientific conclusions, reasonable minds with 

 a sufficient training can fully satisfy themselves. However, it is not 

 possible to be content to stop here, and the further step to which we 

 feel almost impelled, unfortunately falls not within the domain of 

 science but of metaphysics. I say " unfortunately," because the rea- 

 soning which is at our disposal in metaphysics, unlike that of science, 

 is in reality not an appeal to every trained human mind of sufficient 

 capacity, but to those which have a leaning towards one particular 

 school of thought. That this is the case we are forced to recognise, 

 when in metaphysics we find able and well-instructed minds taking 

 opposite sides, even where their opposition is as great as it is between 

 Realists and Idealists. 



What then is that motion to which science reduces every material 

 phenomenon? The conception of motion is a thought within our 

 minds. This conception exists, but it exists internally; it has no 

 non-egoistic or external existence. It however has its source in part 

 in something existing outside us. This something (in any particular 

 instance) acts uj)on something else, that upon something further, 

 that again upon another something, and so on, till, at the end of a 

 long series of this kind, the last of these somethings is a sensation or 

 sensations which form part of our mind for the time being. These 

 sensations are worked up with what else is then in the mind in such 

 a way that the general outcome of the whole is what we call the per- 

 ception or conception of a motion. But in reality all we know of the 

 original external source is that it is at the farther end of this long 

 series of causes and effects, and that thoughts of which we are con- 

 scious, and which therefore we really know, are at the nearer end. 

 Though we have spoken of intermediate steps of the series, of the y, x, 

 and 10 steps, of chemical or other material changes that occur within 

 our organs of sense, nerves, and brain, the meaning of what we have 

 said is only this, that if what is here going on loere placed at the 

 farthest end of such a series, if in fact made a z and examined as such 

 by some human mind through its organs of sense, nerves, and brain, 

 that under these circumstances what is going on would rouse in that 

 mind sensations which science has succeeded in referring to motions 

 as the z part of the cause. But it is only if reaching the mind by 

 that special circuitous course that motions, whether inside or out- 

 side our bodies, are known to elicit sensations. What they are in 

 themselves we know not ; what their effect within the mind would be 

 if they approached it in any other way we know not ; we only know 

 that they produce, with uniform certainty, this particular series of 

 events when operating in this particular way. We ought therefore 



